Thursday, July 28, 2005

Previous post about bombs

Numerous news organizations and blogs have been approached by Scotland Yard (not this blog we're afraid - too small to be noticed) asking that they not publicize the pictures we did as it may jeopardize an ongoing investigation. A number of them have complied. After some careful consideration, we have decided not to. The reasons are as follows:

We are small, barely hitting 150 readers a day

These pictures are everywhere after ABC posted them. If this isn't a situation of closing the barn door after the horse, pigs and chickens have all left and the cow is turning off the lights, we don't know what is.

We are decidedly contrarian in our viewpoint that this information SHOULD be shared, especially as it relates to safety. Again, animals and empty barns.

Most, if not all, of our readers are Chicago cops. If we can make even one copper aware of what these devices look like...well, we've been to far too many funerals not to post the pictures.

According to General Orders, Bureau of Administrative Services is supposed to put out a teletype after one hour of down time for E-track (the inventory system) authorizing the use of the old inventory books. They have refused to do so, stating that the system keeps going up and down, and can be used. Nonsense !! For the last 3 nights, it doesn't stay up long enough to finish an inventory. Desk Sgts are finishing the inventories for officers finishing their tours of duty so they don't go into overtime. Two computer experts were flown in from Washington DC yesterday morning to solve the problem. After working on it until 1800 hours from 1000 or so, they threw up their hands and said we don't know what's wrong......coming back again this morning. Going back to the inventories, the reason they won't approve using the old books is because then ERPS has to manually enter everything themselves for all inventories using the old books. We wouldn't want to inconvenience them, now would we. I've seen a ton of overtime being approved for backups related to this fiasco...

i'm not a computer guy or anything, but didn't they say that as soon as the department put all of their eggs in the oracle basket, they realsized that it was already out of date and there were better options out there?

Perhaps they should think about hiring some professionals to work in the informational services section, not POs who don't have a clue about network systems. Oh, wait, that would mean they would have to pay the previaling wage for such expertise. Never mind.

Bombers and criminals have never had problem making their devices. The methods and simple materials go back centuries before the Haymarket bomb that killed our own officers.

The problem is our own officers don’t know how to make or use bombing materials. Too many of us would pop open a car trunk see the material in plain view and not recognize anything. Our TSA Bozos at the airports wouldn’t either but they have sniffing equipment that street cops don’t.

Every cop needs training in the area of bomb making and photos of the devices need to be circulated widely so the public can at least inform the police when they see similar devices.